


waiting for your guiding light to bring me back

by tuntekorpp



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Episode Fix-it, Episode: s04e12 The Secret Sea, Episode: s04e13 The Seam, Fix-It, Fuck That Finale Big Time, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuntekorpp/pseuds/tuntekorpp
Summary: “So what? It’s not like we haven’t already accomplished the impossible! I brought back Alice when she was Niffin! Julia lost her Shade and got it back and became a goddess and lost her goddess powers and got them again! We killed Gods for fuck’s sake! Dragons are fucking real and they are mostly assholes! Margo has a fairy eye she can pop in and out any time she wants and yes, it’s as disgusting as it sounds! We resurrected a goddamn mummy, so don’t fucking tell me this is the end of me!”or Quentin refuses to say anything during the Secrets Taken To The Grave session. He's not dying. Not now and not before a very long time.A rewrite of s04e12 and s04e13 and what happens after.





	1. Quentin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my turn to try my hand at a fix-it fic.  
> the title is from the song "the power and the glory" by iamx and i cry approximately every time i listen to it.  
> enjoy.

Going back to Brakebills South really wasn’t in Quentin’s top 5 ideal plans—or even his top 100—but at least it has worked. Not like they had planned, of course not, no one had thought that he’d have to exchange consciousness with a past version of himself to be able to talk to a non-senile Mayakovsky, but it has worked, awkward moments with Alice and past Alice aside.

They have the Incorporate Bond spell. For the first time since The Monster has remembered his sister, Quentin have hopes. Not very high hopes, but hopes all the same.

Coming back to New York only to find out that The Monster has taken Julia so she could be his sister’s new host would have completely destroyed him two days ago, but now he’s only thinking that instead of having to save one of the two people he loved most in his life, he has to save both of them. Easy.

 

Fogg being arrested by the Librarians makes it a little less easy. Sure, the Dean is usually drunk or on his way to be drunk, but he’s also one of the most powerful Magicians on their side. His help would’ve been welcome. They need all the juice they can find to power up the Incorporate Bond—and power it twice.

 

And they find the juice. Except it’s cursed, of course, why wouldn’t it? And Josh is a fish that needs constant eye contact from Margo, because that’s their lives and nothing ever made sense in Quentin’s life ever since he got turned into a goose to fly to Antarctica to get to Brakebills South. Mostly he tries not to think about it—the goose thing and the rest of the Brakebills South thing.

So now they have to find a way to uncurse the giant reservoir of magic sitting in Fillory and turn Josh, who has apparently been kind of dating Margo for a while, back into his human self.

Quentin is so fucking tired, but he can’t stop. Eliot and Julia’s lives are on the line and he won’t rest until they’re both safe and back to themselves. Then and only then, he’ll take a nap—or five—and find himself the best therapist the magic world has to offer.

 

He ends up alone with Alice for the first time since they came back from Antarctica. He had hoped they would all stick together as a group, working toward the solution to Eliot’s and Julia’s possessions, so that he wouldn’t have to face the giant elephant sitting between him and Alice. He had hoped they could wait until the rest of their shit had been dealt with to address it. But it’s his life, so obviously nothing ever goes his way and Marina’s—Kady’s—the _penthouse_ kitchen is as good a place and now is as good a time as any to finally clear the table between them, and hopefully clear the awkwardness.

“Okay here’s my thing,” he starts. Alice looks at him and he can read the apprehension on her face. She was never that good at hiding her emotions, except for when she was a Niffin, and even then, she looked mostly enraged. “I didn’t think that I could ever trust you again. And now...”

“And now?”

Looking at her in the eyes is hard. They have been awful to each other countless times. He said things to her, she betrayed him, betrayed them, and yet.

“I find myself wanting to,” he admits.

She sighs. He rounds the counter to sit next to her. He’s silent for a long time and he can feel her eyes on him but she doesn’t push.

“We were a good team,” he finally says. “We worked well together.”

“We did.”

“I want you in my life, Alice—”

“I want that, too.”

“—as my friend.”

He sees her swallow, and maybe that’s disappointment on her face, sadness, grief for who they were, but ultimately, she faces him, biting slightly into her lower lip.

“You’re right,” she says and he knows she means it, that she isn’t agreeing out of pride.

“I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy, or that everything is gonna be alright right away, but I wanna try.”

She nods. “Okay,” she says, nods again. She pushes her hair behind her ear. “Let’s find a way to break the reservoir’s curse, then.”

 

Quentin never thought he’d ever say that, but he’s starting to hate books. In the past few months, it feels like it’s all he’s been looking at—when he wasn’t being made a witness to the murders committed by The Monster that is. He makes a mental note to add finding a chiropractor to the list of things he’s gonna do once this shitshow is over. Being bent over the book-filled coffee table must be doing great things to his back.

The front door opens. Seeing Kady obviously sick in a Librarian’s uniform is shocking, but not as much as having Zelda the actual Librarian in their apartment, which is quickly topped in what-the-fuck factor by Plover the Pedophile being alive despite having been dropped in the Poison Room months ago, and turning out to be the person who knows how to break the curse.

Quentin isn’t sure what he hates more: the fact that Kady is dying from the Poison Room just like the original Penny, the fact that it’s Plover who gives them the key to the curse, the fact that the key is a flower that blooms thanks to your love for Fillory, or that he’s apparently the person designated to make that flower bloom.

“Maybe when I was 12, but,” he sighs when Alice looks at him like it’s obvious it should be him. “I don’t know, Fillory’s taken a lot of the shit I love.”

“It has to be you,” Zelda says. “You have the best chances to make the garden grow.”

 

And yep, Quentin hates it. And he can’t do it. He can’t remember how it felt to love Fillory so unconditionally. Four years ago? He would’ve made that flower bloom like nobody. Now? He can only remember The Beast, his friends being injured and dying, Alice niffining out and then having to kill her, Fillory not choosing him as High King, its Gods being massive assholes not giving a damn about the people living there, Arielle dying and Eliot dying, and then Eliot rejecting him after remembering fifty years of their alternate lives, the fucking boat quest and the depression key, Castle Blackspire and losing everything.

Fillory—or rather, the books—helped him stay alive when he didn’t know it was real, when he didn’t know magic was real and he thought the rest of his life would be spent fighting against his brain.

“You know the worst part of getting exactly what you want?” he says out loud in the cavern, looking at that fucking plant that won’t bloom. “When it’s not good enough.” He takes a deep breath, rubs at his face. “Fillory was supposed to mean something. _I_ was supposed to mean something here. But it’s all… It’s all just random. It’s so random, that the only way to save my friends is to yell at a fucking plant!” He sighs. “Honestly, fuck Fillory.”

He sits down heavily in front of the garden.

In the past four years, he feels like it only ever brought him pain and suffering, except for those fifty alternate years with Eliot, solving the Mosaic, but more importantly, building their family, nurturing their love, watching Teddy grow, then watching their grandchildren grow. He closes his eyes and focus on his memories of that life, on the happiness he only ever experienced there. He wants it back, needs it back. Peaches and plums, motherfucker.

 

Quentin opens his eyes. The garden is blurry through his tears, but he sees the plant, previously brown and wilted, turn green, grow leaves and flowers as in an accelerated time-lapse.

“Guys,” he calls, rubbing at his eyes with his sleeves. “Guys, something’s happening.”

 

He gives a leaf to Penny to give to Margo and save Josh. Alice and him don’t even have the time to eat the plant before a rabbit drops and tells them The Monsters are in the Library.

“Okay, we have to go before they leave,” he says. They can’t lose them again.

“I’ll grab Margo and the axes,” Penny-23 says. “Are you sure the plant is gonna work?”

“Either it will or when you come back we’ll both be fish,” Alice replies.

Quentin tries not to think about what happens if Plover was wrong, if he just made them do that as a revenge. He doesn’t think about what happens if Alice and him are turned into fishes and Penny, Margo and Kady are the only people left to stop The Monsters and save Eliot and Julia.

They eat the leaves.

“Do you feel anything?” Alice asks.

“Super stressed out?”

He squats down to the shore. Moment of truth. He drinks a mouthful of the magic and it feels like what he imagines having one of Mayakovsky super batteries shoved inside of him would feel like. And he hasn’t turned into a fish. Maybe this time the Universe isn’t going to screw them over.

They drink as much as they can.

 

Penny-23 comes back with the axes, the bottle and a pirate eye-patch wearing Margo.

“What...” Quentin starts, because yes, his life is weird, but Margo is wearing a pirate eye-patch. Somehow it wasn’t that disturbing when she was in Fillory and wearing intricately embroidered eye-patches matching her fantastic outfits, but right now, he just can’t process much of what he’s seeing.

“Fish-Josh needs constant eye-contact to survive, I gave him the leaf and left my fairy eye next to his bowl,” Margo says, as practical as ever. “Now let’s ax those fucking Monsters.”

“O-okay. Here, eat this and drink from the reservoir.”

She raises an eyebrow at the leaf but eats it before kneeling next to the water-magic and drinking.

“Alright. Let’s go.”

 

The Library is littered with bodies when they get there. The constant gray color of that world doesn’t do much to make the blood streaks and trails less gory. The entire place is silent.

“How do we find them?” Penny asks.

“We follow the corpses,” Alice says.

In any other situation, Quentin would’ve winced at how practical she sounds, but she’s right.

They find the sister. It hurts to hear Julia’s voice being so cold and detached, so unlike her. Alice doesn’t have much reservations and throws a battle magic spell at her immediately. It’s strong enough to send the sister flying a few feet back, but not strong enough to knock her out completely. The sister starts monologuing like a good old villain and Quentin throws another spell at her to keep her distracted. Only when she’s completely focused on the both of them does Penny pop out behind her with Margo, who buries one of her axes into Julia’s back. The scream that comes out of Julia’s mouth is inhuman, animal, and one of the worst things that Quentin ever had to hear, but gold dust flies out of her body and into the bottle Alice is holding out. Together they perform the Incorporate Bond spell. Quentin feels a sliver of relief when he sees the wards surround the bottle.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to hold,” Fogg, coming out of the cell he was held in, says. “We need to go back to Brakebills, I have something that can help.”

“We need to get her help!” Penny says, bent over Julia, who looks like she might be in shock.

“We need to find Eliot,” Margo says coldly.

Quentin would like nothing more than agree with her, but he feels the magic inside of him fading already.

“We need to go back to the Reservoir. Even if we find Eliot now, we won’t be powerful enough to take him.”

Margo rolls her eye. “Shit.”

“We need to get her to a doctor!” Penny insists, again.

“No,” Julia says weakly, “he’s right. We need to go to the Reservoir.”

 

Except when they arrive at the Reservoir, it’s empty, already drained by Everett.

“Always gotta be a fucking twist,” Penny says.

Quentin couldn’t agree more.

“Alright, we need to go back to Brakebills,” Fogg says.

Margo looks like she’s ready to argue, or murder someone, but she doesn’t say anything.

 

They rush Julia to the infirmary as soon as they arrive. She’s sweating and her face is paler than it’s ever been. She starts writhing in pain when they put her in bed.

“Jesus,” Margo mutters.

Fogg turns to Alice and her.

“Under my desk, trap door, popper 22 to unlock, don’t put your hand in there, temperature’s at absolute zero. Should slow her down,” he says nodding to the bottle Alice is still holding. “Go.”

Margo and Alice disappear in the hallway.

Quentin sits down heavily next to Julia’s bed. Penny is on the other side, yelling at Professor Lipson to give her something for the pain.

“I did, twice,” Lipson answers.

Quentin takes Julia’s hand in his. He tones down the rest of the conversations happening around them and focus on her. She’s gripping his hand so tightly her knuckles are white and the bones of his hand are grinding together, but he doesn’t care. If it helps her, if it comforts her, he doesn’t care he’s in pain.

 

Penny disappears for a few seconds and comes back with The Binder just as Julia loses consciousness. The weird old guy explains how she’s going to stay in a cycle of agony for a millennia because her body is teared between humanity and goddesshood, and how he can stop it by transforming her fully into a goddess or reverting her completely to being a human.

“It should be her choice,” Penny says.

“It must be her choice,” Quentin adds. He’s exhausted but he’s not ready to let anyone make a choice for Julia.

“The Binder paused for Julia to make that choice,” The Binder says. “And dryly noted she wasn’t in a talking mood.”

“Jesus Christ,” Quentin mutters. “Penny, you can go into her mind, right? Like that’s one of your abilities?”

Penny looks up at him. “Yeah.”

Quentin can’t believe he has to spell it for him. “Then go in there and fucking ask her!” he almost yells.

Penny’s eyes go wide, but he sits down on the floor and closes his eyes.

He opens them after what feels like an eternity and mere seconds at the same time.

“You talked to her?” Quentin asks.

“Yeah,” Penny swallows heavily. “She’s choosing goddess,” he says to The Binder.

“Very well, The Binder replied,” The Binder says. “The Binder then asked the people of the room to give The Binder some space to work.”

Quentin slips his hand from Julia’s and stands up to the side. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Alice and Margo coming back.

“What’s happening?” Alice asks.

“The Binder is transforming Julia into a full goddess.”

Margo raises an eyebrow. “Neat.”

 

They let The Binder work. Julia wakes up with a gasp and eyes glowing gold and immediately slump against her pillows again.

“Ow,” she says quietly.

“Julia’s body needed rest, The Binder explained to Julia. Her powers were going to take some time to come back fully,” The Binder says. “Julia was a goddess again, but a convalescent one.”

Penny and Quentin rush to her side.

“Hey,” Quentin says with a smile.

She returns it. “Honestly, I feel like I’ve been run over by six or eight trucks, but I’m fine.”

“And by fine, you mean...” Penny says, frowning.

“What does it look like?”

“Like you’re alive.”

She laughs softly but sobers up. “We need to talk about The Monster. His sister. I saw her plan, her goal. They want to take it up to the Old Gods.”

“Wait, what does that even mean?” Alice asks and she gets closer to the bed. Margo follows.

“I don’t know,” Julia answers. “And neither does the sister. She just knows it would feel good to kill them and eradicate us in some sort of insane nuclear winter she couldn’t give a shit about.”

“Do they know how to get to the Old Gods?” Quentin asks.

Julia nods. “They found a spell, in the Library. It opens a door to their plane. My guess is The Monster wants to find his sister, finish the plan, kill the Old Gods or get smashed to a pulp trying.”

“That means smash Eliot,” Quentin mutters.

“Yeah let’s keep that from happening,” Margo says.

“She left the scroll with the spell in my jacket,” Julia says, nodding to her jacket abandoned on a chair.

Quentin searches it and takes the scroll out of a pocket. It looks old but otherwise utterly unremarkable. He raises an eyebrow at Julia.

“Whatever’s in this is sure to unlock the door,” she says, confidently.

 

Once Julia is cleared to leave the infirmary, they go to the Physical Kids Cottage to figure out the rest of their plan.

Josh is already waiting for them with two trays of baked goods when they get there.

“Holy shit the leaf worked,” Margo says when she sees him.

Josh holds out something wrapped in a tissue to her. “Your eye did too.”

Margo takes the thing and unwraps it. Next to Quentin, Penny makes a weird “might puke soon or might black out” sound when they see it’s her eye. She removes her eye-patch and plops her eye back in its socket with a sickening squishy noise.

Julia goes up to one of the rooms to rest while they summarize all the shit that happened when he was a fish to Josh.

“Sooo that Everett wants to be a god and is now so juiced up on the Reservoir power that he can just rip the god power right out of Eliot? Why don’t we let him?” he asks once he’s up to speed.

“Let that psycho book-fondler rip The Monster out of Eliot and probably kill him?” Margo replies, not bothering to tone down her anger.

“She’s right,” Quentin says. “Anything where he could die is off the table.”

“Right,” Josh says looking down to his shoes. “Sorry.”

It’s Alice who breaks the awkward silence following Josh’s apology. “We should work on finding The Monster.”

“Agreed,” Penny says. “I’m gonna see how’s Julia. Maybe her powers have started to come back.”

And with that, he climbs up the stairs two by two and disappears upstairs.

“Smooth,” Margo comments.

 

They sit on the couches and start working on a locator spell that could work on The Monster despite the very low ambient magic.

Which is exactly when The Monster itself pops into the room.

Josh jumps out of his seat. “Shit! I mean, uh, hi.”

“Where is my sister?” The Monster asks, his voice as toneless and detached as ever. “And where is the scroll?”

Quentin glances at the scroll, hidden from The Monster’s view by a throw pillow, next to Alice.

“The scroll?” Josh asks slowly, clearly aiming for clueless and failing miserably.

Alice slides her hand on her side to grab the scroll.

“Answer me now,” The Monster continues walking towards them.

“Hum, what does it look like again?” Quentin asks to divert its attention away from Josh, who’s too close to Alice and the scroll.

The Monster’s eyes snap to Quentin and he wants to scream. Eliot’s eyes shouldn’t look like that, cold and dead and so not Eliot it’s physically painful to see. He hates having The Monster’s attention on him, remembers all too well the time where it was obsessed with being his friend, all the while making him watch it murders people and breaking his bones when he wasn’t complying with its orders.

The Monster comes even closer and Quentin is sure it’s going to see the scroll and kill them all in the next few seconds.

Except the moment Alice grabs the scroll, it unfolds on its own, a shimmering portal appears out of nowhere and sucks up the people closest to it, Alice and Josh, inside before closing down as quickly as it opened.

The Monster throws himself where the portal was a fraction of second before.

“No,” he grunts before facing Quentin and Margo, raising his hand menacingly.

Quentin sees Fogg behind The Monster, who senses him as well and turns towards him.

“I don’t...like you. Do I?” The Monster asks.

“I have no idea,” Fogg says, calm and collected, “But I can assure you, you will hate me.” He motions with his hand and smoke raises up from the ground and engulfs The Monster. When it dissipates, The Monster is gone.

Margo jumps to her feet. “What did you do? He was right there!”

“Yes, I noticed,” Fogg says. “I also noticed that we couldn’t have done anything since the ambient is very low and we would have had no way of casting the Incorporate Bond, even more so without Miss Quinn with us. I’ve merely thrown a disorientation spell on The Monster with a teleportation one. He should be in a very specific portion of the woods as we speak.”

“He _should_?”

Margo looks ready to bury one of her axes in Fogg and Quentin is trying to think about how to avoid that, but is saved to do so by Josh and Alice reappearing out of nowhere, panting harshly and holding plates with cake on it? His life makes no sense.

Julia and Penny are also choosing this moment to come downstairs and Fogg decides staying in the vicinity of a potentially homicidal Margo isn’t very wise and leaves.

They call Kady to come meet them. When she arrives, she looks better, less on the brink of death, but also more confident in herself. She looks like a leader and Quentin wonders what she did between the moment she came back from the Poison Room and now.

“What happened?” Quentin asks Josh and Alice, because someone needs to ask that question and it might as well be him.

“We kinda met the spokesperson for the Old Gods?” Josh replies. “And he mostly insulted us but then he told us how to get rid of The Monster and his sister.”

“How?” Julia asks.

“By throwing them in the Seam between the universe and the antiverse,” Alice replies, putting down her cake on the nearest flat surface—a console full of liquor bottles.

Penny frowns. “And that Seam is where exactly?”

“The Mirror Realm.”

“That’s good right, we know how to get there,” Josh says.

Kady crosses her arms. “Okay, but the Mirror Realm’s an entire world. How are we gonna find the Seam?”

“I think I know where it is,” Alice says. There’s a pause at everyone looks at her and right, not everyone decided to trust her again like he did. She looks at them nervously. “There’s this place, this door, and what’s behind it felt different.”

“Different like?” Margo asks coldly.

“Like I knew I shouldn’t go near it even when I was a Niffin.”

Kady raises her eyebrows. “Perfect, we should definitely all walk right in there.”

Quentin sighs. “According to Fogg, The Monster’s out there right now, confused for as long as that spell will last.” He turns to Penny-23. “If you can travel us out there, we have an opportunity to surprise him.”

“Then what?” Margo asks. “None of us is powerful enough to cast the Bond.” She turns to Julia. “You’re still not powered up, right?”

Julia shakes her head. “I can feel magic, but just the way I could when I was human.”

“There might be a way,” Kady says. “Ambient is low, yes, but you know what amplifies it?”

Julia smiles. “Cooperative magic.”

“We tell everyone, hedge witches, magicians, and I mean all of the world, wherever there’s a pipe. Fillory even. And we all do the same thing at the same time.”

“We could pull this off,” Alice says. “Kady’s right. They’d need to keep casting as long as he takes us to take the bottles to the Seam, but it could work.”

“Let’s get to work then.”

 

So they work. And work some more, until Quentin can feel his eyes closing on their own. They can’t afford to waste time, but he can’t go on this exhausted. He leaves the group and starts climbing up the stairs. Alice’s voice stops him before he’s halfway up.

“Hey Q, can we talk for a second?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking and, uh, I’d like you to come with me. In the Mirror Realm’s.”

Quentin sits down on the stairs, rubs at his face.

“Okay, why?”

“You said it yourself. We work well as a team. And you’re probably the only one in the group who is starting to trust me again.”

“Okay, sure. It makes sense.”

A hint of a smile passes across Alice’s face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he repeats and gets to his feet.

He is more than ready to go catch even five minutes of sleep, but Margo calls them from the living room.

“Okay people, let’s do this, we got a multiverse to save!”

Alice goes. He stays at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing his face, his eyes, trying to clear his mind. He needs to save Eliot. He focus on that thought, pushes the need to sleep aside.

“You okay?”

Julia is in front of him, her eyes warm and full of concern.

“Yeah, uh, I just—I wish I could’ve gotten some sleep before facing The Monster.”

Her Mona Lisa smile is back. “Here,” she says and touches his forehead. A fog lifts inside of him, his head clearer than it had been in weeks, months.

“Wow.”

“It’s the only thing I can do for now. I’m sorry I can’t help more.”

He puts his hands on her shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says and for the first time in a long time, he truly believes those words. “We’re gonna be okay.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. I’ll see you soon, alright?”

She nods and hugs him before he joins the others.

 

Penny travels them to the part of the woods where Fogg said he sent The Monster. They see it, sitting on the ground against a tree, unmoving. A chill runs down Quentin’s back. What if they’re too late? What if The Monster has grown tired of Eliot and has killed him after leaving his body? What if the strain was too much for Eliot’s body and it just shut down?

He takes a deep breath, pushes the thoughts away and readjusts his grip on his ax. Margo pops out her eye and throws it next to The Monster. She turns to Penny and him, nods, and prowls to the side with her ax. Quentin and Penny rush to The Monster.

“Hey!” Quentin yells.

The Monster stands up, vacillating on his feet and raises a hand in his classic “break your neck” move. The rest happens in a blur for Quentin. He feels Penny grabbing him and traveling them away, just as Margo surges behind The Monster and axes it in the stomach. It growls and groans and moans and finally collapses. Gold dust emerges from the wound. Quentin watches it fly into the bottle Penny is holding, hands ready to do the spell. He can’t think about Eliot, bleeding on the floor, Margo kneeling next to him, calling his name more and more desperately. He can’t think about it because if he does, he’ll be too much of a wreck to perform the Incorporate Bond and they’re too close to being done with that nightmare for him to fuck it up now. So he deliberately focus on the bottle, on Penny sending the message out for the cooperative spell. He ignores the way his heart breaks at how raw Margo’s voice is as she screams for Eliot to wake up and starts moving his hands to cast the spell.

The wards finally, _finally_ , glow around the bottle. Quentin wishes he could breathe a little bit easier but Margo is still begging Eliot to come back, her hands covered with his blood as she tries to stop the bleeding from his wound.

“Eliot, if there’s a tunnel with Grandma, tell her to piss off and come back to me, you selfish fuck! Get back here!”

But Eliot doesn’t open his eyes and she calls his name again and again, yells and cries.

“Well, when you put it so sweetly, Bambi, hmm?” comes Eliot’s voice, weak, barely above a hoarse whisper.

A weight lifts off Quentin’s chest, but Eliot loses consciousness a few seconds afterwards, just when Penny grabs them to travel them back to Brakebills.

 

They rush him to the infirmary and it’s Julia all over again, except this time they don’t have the goddess joker card to play to save him.

“Do something, please!” Margo says to Lipson.

“They need all the ambient for those bottles. Before I was a magician I was a trauma surgeon. I’m perfectly capable of saving him the old-fashioned way. If you need to cry, go outside.”

Lipson takes Eliot away. It’s hard, seeing Margo so undone, so desperate, she who is always so controlled and put together. But Quentin gets it. It’s Eliot. If he wasn’t still focused on the mission, he would be collapsing on himself as well.

“Let’s go,” Penny says. They don’t have much time, even with all the magicians in the world performing the spell so it’s holding until they get to the Seam.

Quentin opens his mouth but the sound of someone running down the hallway stops him from replying. It’s Julia, her hair flying down behind her as she speeds to them.

“Where is he? Where’s Eliot?” she asks.

Margo points at the door behind which Lipson took Eliot. “What are you gonna do?”

“Some more power came back to me, I think I can help.”

“You think?” Margo says, but her tone isn’t as sarcastic as she probably aimed it to be. There’s some kind of hope in there too.

“Yeah,” Julia says and disappears behind the door.

Quentin sighs.

“Okay, we have to go now,” he says.

Margo hugs him. “Be careful. We’re not losing anyone today.”

 

Penny travels him to the lab where Alice is waiting with the first bottle.

“It’s holding?” he asks her.

“For now. But we have to hurry.”

Penny quickly traces the sigil on the mirror with his blood and they cross into the Mirror Realm.

“Okay,” he says once they’re on the other side. “Home is right through here. We do this, we move quick.”

Alice nods. “Remember, no traveling and no magic. It goes bad fast here.”

She leads them through hallways, each new one creepier and gloomier than the previous one, and stops in front of a door. It’s white, like the rest of the walls here, looks like any other door they passed on their way. Her hands hover above the handle.

“Alice?” Quentin asks.

“Just give me a sec,” she says, nervous.

“We’ll listen to your guts next time,” Penny cuts and he opens the door.

The room they step in is the lab, a giant frame covered with a white sheet standing in the middle of it. Penny and him removes the sheet, revealing a mirror with a cloud of pure darkness circled with blueish white light inside of it.

“It’s the Seam,” Alice says behind them, sounding more terrified than Quentin as ever heard her, but coming closer anyway. “Let’s do this.”

Quentin swings his bottle and throws it at the Seam. It absorbs it quietly and somehow, Quentin was expecting something more…flashy, more...loud? But no, The Monster joins the antiverse with barely a _woosh_.

Alice passes him the second bottle just as Everett enters the room. He has his usual commanding look, but his edges are jumping, like a glitchy hologram—too much magic in one human body for sure.

“Quentin. That’s mine,” he says. “Hand it over, please.”

He raises his hand, ready to cast a spell, and Quentin does the same, ready to deflect it.

“No!” Alice jumps between them, “You can’t cast in here!”

“I know,” Everett says, and his voice might be calm but the glitching of his body gets worse, “Mutually assured destruction.” He lowers his hand. “Which is why you’ll give it to me.”

Quentin goes to throw the bottle in the Seam, but Everett is faster, throwing a scroll at the edge of the mirror and fracturing it, effectively breaking the connection to the Seam.

“You tried,” Everett says, coming closer to Quentin. “You did. I’m impressed. But that bond won’t hold. Give it to me before The Monster gets out and everything goes far more shit-shaped.”

Quentin tracks Penny and Alice, retreating away from them and the mirror. An idea is formulating in his mind. It’s a terrible idea and it’s probably going to come back to bite him in the ass, but he needs to try.

“Quentin, I think you need to—to...” Alice stutters.

“You friend Eliot is safe. I’ll let you go,” Everett continues. “Just let me handle this.”

Quentin gauges the distance between Alice, Penny and the mirror. His monumentally stupid idea could work. Everett is monologuing about how he would be different from the other gods, how better he would be, but Quentin is only half listening. He lowers his hand, keeps his eyes away from Alice. She knows him too well not to guess what he’s about to do.

“Okay,” he says. “I get it.”

Everett monologues some more and Quentin grabs the opportunity to imperceptibly get closer to the mirror while his hand works behind his back. He keeps his eyes trained on Everett, but in the periphery of his vision, he can see Penny and Alice, he can see them figure out that something is wrong, that he’s about to do something potentially terrible.

“In fact, you’ll go down as a hero,” Everett is saying, “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Take her,” Quentin says, “do it now.”

And even if Quentin isn’t looking at him, Penny understands and catches Alice around the waist to take her to the door. The fractures on the mirror start glowing.

“No, no!” Alice yells. She has always been the smartest of them all. She knows what he just did.

“What did you do?” Everett asks, barely keeping his rage in check.

“Just a minor mending,” Quentin says, nonchalant, and he chucks the bottle at the mirror, knowing it’ll hit it a fraction of second after it’s fully repaired and the connection to the Seam with it. Everett launches himself after it.

Alice is yelling, struggling against Penny who’s trying to get her away from the mirror and the sparks coming out of it. The sparks hit Everett’s body, turn it into mist and dust.

Quentin runs. It feels like tiny needles of warmth hitting his back at first then engulfing him. He closes his eyes.

 

When he opens them, he’s in an elevator. Its doors open and reveal a smiling suit-wearing Penny. Their original Penny.

“Hey,” Penny says. “It’s been a while. Welcome to the Underwolrd.”

Quentin stumbles backward until he hits the elevator wall.

“Oh shit. Really?”

 

Penny leads him to some sort of office and makes him sit in one of the couches.

“This is Secrets Taken To The Grave,” he tells him. “Once you’ve unburdened yourself and been truthful, you’ll get a card that’ll lead you where you need to be in the Afterlife.”

Then Penny gives him a mug.

“What’s this?”

“Hot chocolate.”

“I’m dead, but there’s still hot chocolate,” Quentin says and he laughs. He laughs because the situation is ridiculous and really, it’s better to laugh than to cry. He cries anyway. “What did I do?”

Penny sighs. “You did something really stupid but really brave. Mostly really stupid.”

It makes Quentin chuckle. “Yeah, I remember that.” He takes a deep breath. “So. I have to tell the truth about my life so I can move on, right?” Penny nods. “Okay, well I’m not gonna say anything.”

“What? Dude, that’s not how it works.”

“I don’t care. I’m not dying. I promised Julia and I promised Margo and I haven’t even been able to make sure that Eliot’s okay, so no, I’m not dying and I’m not moving on.”

Penny throws his hands in the air. “What the hell do you think is gonna happen? Your body was destroyed, man!”

Quentin puts down the cup on the coffee table and stands up. “So what? It’s not like we haven’t already accomplished the impossible! I brought back Alice when she was Niffin! Julia lost her Shade and got it back and became a goddess and lost her goddess powers and got them again! We killed Gods for fuck’s sake! Dragons are fucking real and they are mostly assholes! I lived an entire life and then I didn’t!” His voice is cracking but he doesn’t care. He needs to lay down how ridiculous and impossible the last four years have been. “Josh was a fish!” he yells, almost hysterical. He knocks on his shoulder and it produces a hollow sound. “Half my arm is made of wood thanks to fucking Centaurs’ medicine! Margo has a fairy eye she can pop in and out any time she wants and _yes_ , it’s as disgusting as it sounds! Animals can talk and—and Mayakovsky turned me into a fox and we built a golem for Eliot when he was stuck in Fillory, and we resurrected a goddamn _mummy_ , so don’t fucking tell me this is the end of me!”

He’s panting when he’s done, but he doesn’t feel any better after laying down the facts.

Penny raises his hands in the universal appeasement gesture. “Okay, calm down.”

“Calm down?!”

“I don’t know, dude, okay?” Penny cries out. “I wasn’t trained for that possibility!”

Quentin sits back down heavily on the couch. “What happens when someone doesn’t pass the Secret Taken To The Grave thing?”

Penny sighs. “They go back to the waiting area until they’re ready to try again.”

“Okay.”

“What?”

“Take me to the waiting area.”

“Then what?”

“I figure something out, and our friends upstairs figure something out and then I’m not dead.”

Penny slumps in his chair. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?”

Quentin snorts.

 

Penny takes him to the waiting area.

“Hey, did my dad move on already?” Quentin asks him.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry.”

Quentin swallows. “It’s okay. I’m glad he’s at peace now.”

Penny claps him on the shoulder. “Remember, you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“I’m not changing my mind.”

Penny smiles. “Yeah, I know.”

He starts walking back to his office.

“Hey Penny,” Quentin calls back. Penny stops and turns, raises an eyebrow. “How do I get a Library card, down here?”


	2. Aftermath

Julia is with Margo next to Eliot’s bed, waiting for him to wake up and for Penny, Alice, and Quentin to come back—whichever happens first.

There’s a soft knock at the door. Julia looks up, and there’s Penny, looking like he just went to Hell and back. Julia stands up.

“Penny? Are you okay?”

He nods, not quite looking at her in the eyes.

“What happened? Is it done?”

She sees him swallow. “Yeah—yeah, it’s...it’s done.” His voice is empty, flat. Like a dead man talking.

Behind her, Julia hears Margo sighs then murmurs something to the still unconscious Eliot.

“Where’s Q?”

Penny glances at her and she can read in his eyes that something happened, something wrong, so very very wrong.

“Penny, where’s Q?” she asks again, her voice wavering. “Where is he?!”

“Julia… I’m sorry—” he starts but she stops him.

“No.” She shakes her head. “No, he promised. He promised he was coming back, this is not happening,” she says, frantic, tears rolling down her cheeks. She can’t be losing Q. She can’t. Not now and not ever.

“Julia—” he tries again.

“No!”

She can’t be here. She can’t be in this room. She can feel her power vibrating under her skin and she hates that it’s here now when it wasn’t here before, when it was truly needed. She side-steps Penny and runs away from the infirmary.

 

*

 

Penny makes a move as if to follow Julia.

“Give her time,” Margo says tightly, her eyes not leaving Eliot’s face. “She just lost her best friend.” It’s a feeling she knows all too well.

Penny sighs.

“What happened?” she asks. She doesn’t want to hear the details of how they lost Quentin, but she knows Eliot is going to want them when he wakes up.

So she listens to Penny, tries her best not to cry, doesn’t succeed very well.

“That asshole,” she whispers. “I told him to come back.”

She wipes her cheek with the hand not holding on to Eliot’s.

 

*

 

Eliot wakes up to a world of pain. His stomach is on fire and the rest of his body feels like he’s just been run over by a train or five. But at least he has control. There’s no one in his head. It’s just him, and he’s free.

He opens his eyes and his Bambi is here, looking at him with tears in her eyes and she’s beautiful and he loves her oh so much. He smiles faintly at her.

“I love you,” is the first thing he tells her.

She smiles at him, but it’s broken, obscured by the grief written all over her face.

“I love you too,” she croaks, like she screamed and cried too much. Which she did if he remembers the moment when he woke up in the woods correctly. She was yelling at him. She still looks sad, though, and he wonders if another terrible thing happened or if it’s just the remnant of everything that she lived through when he was possessed.

She sniffles, then composes herself back to something somewhat controlled and confident. He can see every step, every crack in that facade.

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Like someone put an ax in me?” he says, attempting a joke. She smiles. He doesn’t like that smile. It’s brittle and hollow and it doesn’t look like her at all. “What’s going on, Bambi? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Her poorly held mask crumbles. Her shoulders slump as she takes his hand into both of hers and she doesn’t even try to hold her tears back.

“Quentin’s dead,” she says. Her voice breaks and his heart with it.

“What? No, he can’t be, he—” His eyes fill with tears and he chokes on a sob. “I was—I was supposed to—I had to tell him, he can’t—I—what—what happened?”

As Margo tells him, the pain in his heart swallows the rest of him, the throbbing in his stomach a distant ache compared to the black hole boring through his chest.

They cry, his hand gripping Margo’s as hard as possible, holding onto her as much as he can so she doesn’t vanish into thin air either.

 

The night he’s released from the infirmary, they hold a memorial bonfire in the woods, just outside the Cottage. Eliot doesn’t know who chose the spot and, if he was feeling anything but all consuming grief, he’d almost think it’s a nice spot, with the way the trees open to the small clearing, its rocks drawing an arc around the fire. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to set a foot in that place after tonight.

They all look drained and shell shocked. Margo helps him sit down. They watch the flames in silence. Eliot wonders if someone should say something when Julia stands up.

“This is not over,” she says with more strength than he thought she could have at that moment.

They all look at her.

“I refuse to believe that this is the end. It’s not. We have defied the impossible too many times for me to believe that nothing can be done.” She turns to Alice. “We all thought that was it when you became a Niffin, but Q refused to give up and defied all the odds and brought you back. I got told that losing your Shade was irreversible and yet here I am. I became a fucking goddess—twice. We killed gods and we banished monsters, we faced fairies and dragons. We jumped timelines. So if all of this is possible, then saving Q must be too. If anything, we have to try, because that’s what Q would do—has done—for us.”

Her eyes are glowing. Eliot can’t figure if it’s because of the fire reflecting in them, or if it’s her goddess powers, but he finds himself wanting to believe her, to hope with her, as terrified of that hope as he is.

“What do you suggest?” Alice asks. She sounds broken and nervous and desperate. It would break Eliot’s heart, if it wasn’t already in pieces.

“There are tons of myths of people being brought back from the dead. And by now, we know that myths are anchored in reality.”

“So, research?” Margo says. Eliot can hear she’s trying to sound like her usual cynical self, but she takes his hand in hers and squeezes. He feels her hope there.

“Zelda owes us big time,” Kady remarks.

“And we still have The Binder,” Julia adds. “And I’m also a goddess again, so that can’t hurt, right?”

They all talk about the ways they could find information, even Fogg, even Penny-23. Eliot listens to them and he wants to hope, he does, but he’s so afraid of being crushed again.

At some point, Margo produces a flask from her jacket.

“Let’s start Operation Save Our Nerd, then,” she proclaims and takes a swig of the flask before passing it around.

They all drink, except for him, because apparently life-threatening wounds and alcohol don’t mix, but he offers a smile to Margo and she leans against him.

“We’re getting him back, El,” she says softly. “I promise.”


	3. Operation Save Our Nerd

The next morning, Penny travels Alice to the Library, then comes back for a world tour of the hedge witches with Kady. They both look awkward and nervous at the idea of being stuck together for the foreseeable future, but Kady says “For Quentin” and Penny nods and they leave without another word.

Margo sends a rabbit to Fillory so Josh, Fen, and Tick can search there too.

Julia volunteers to deal with The Binder because no one else truly has the patience for it.

Fogg locks himself in his office with strict orders not to disturb him as he reaches to his entire network of magicians, creatures, scholars and whoever else and whatever else he knows.

Which leaves Eliot and Margo to do the research in the Brakebills library.

“Do we take the Christian mythology into account?” Margo asks him, a heavy leather bound volume in hand. “Jesus was holy and all of that before he died so I’m not sure it applies to our situation,” she muses.

“The dying for our sins part is relevant, though,” he mutters.

Margo puts down the book on their table. “What the hell does that mean?”

He sighs. “It means that if I hadn’t tried to kill The Monster in Blackspire, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Yeah and Q would be stuck in the castle babysitting The Monster, which wouldn’t be that much of an improvement compared to our current situation, now would it?”

“At least he’d be alive.”

Margo sits down. “Eliot,” she starts in a quiet voice, devoid of her usual sass and that’s how Eliot knows Margo is deadly serious. “I know that you blame yourself for what happened, but you’re wrong. The only person responsible for this mess is Everett. He’s the only reason why Q did what he did. Q never blamed you for everything that happened with The Monster. Not once. So don’t do that to yourself.”

He nods. God, he wishes he could have a drink right now. Researching was never his forte. That was Q’s thing. Books were Q’s thing. But Q isn’t here, and Q needs his help, so Eliot swallows his guilt and opens another book.

 

The Fillory research gives them exactly jack shit. The Fillorian way of dealing with death is usually to pray to Umber and Ember and hopes for the best, and since Ember killed Umber and Quentin then killed Ember, it doesn’t look like hoping for the best will do them any good.

 

Penny and Kady pop back every now and then to give them updates, but more importantly, to have time away from each other. Most hedges don’t really meddle in necromancy and the ones who do are literal psychopaths. Marina mentions someone she knew in her own timeline, but in this timeline, he was one of the first hedges to be killed by the Library.

 

The Binder answer is vague as shit, which doesn’t surprise anyone, and can be summarized in six words: “petition the god the right way.” Without mentioning how to petition the god the right way, or who the right god is, of course.

When The Binder doesn’t offer any more lead, Julia decides to ask Plover, because once again, she’s the only one who has the patience to deal with his shit, but he turns out useless on the subject.

 

The only sort of good news they have come from Alice and Zelda. They tell them some of the books they wanted for their research had already been requested by the Underworld branch of the Library, by a “very determined long-haired fellow” according to the words of the head Librarian of the Underworld branch.

Quentin is alive and he is fighting on his side too.

 

They hold a meeting at the Physical Kids cottage and what comes out of it is that they have to meticulously analyze every myths about coming back from the dead to find which god is the right god and how to petition that god correctly.

“It’d be logical for it to be Hades, right? He’s the one ruling the Underworld,” Penny says.

“Yes, but the sister killed Persephone, so I’m not sure he’s gonna want to help us in any way,” Julia remarks and with that, they’re back to square one and divide the myths to research between all of them.

 

That night, Julia helps Eliot to get to the kitchen for a much needed break. He whips out an omelet while she makes them some tea.

“What do you think he’s doing now?” he asks her.

“Q? Probably harassing all the Underworld Librarians into finding a way to come back,” she replies, pouring the tea into two mugs.

“He better be.”

“I hope so.”

He cuts the omelet in two, puts it on plates. They eat in silence.

“Are you okay?” Julia asks when both their plates are empty. He snorts lightly and she smiles apologetically. “I mean. I have my goddess powers healing myself from the inside out, I wasn’t possessed for as long as you were and I’m still a mess.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You look like you’re doing pretty okay to me.”

“I know that Q is out there and he needs us to hold it together and bring him back. It’s the only reason I’m not sobbing into my pillow right now.”

“Fair.”

“So. How are you?”

Eliot clears his throat. “Well, my guts are still healing from being torn open with a magical ax and apparently no magic can speed up the recovery, but I’m fine, mostly.”

He takes a sip from his tea and wishes, not for the first time, that he could spike it up. Okay, maybe he’s not fine. The face Julia is making tells him she’s not convinced either. He puts down the mug.

“Okay, am I going to need a _lot_ of therapy once this is over? Yes. Do I have PTSD from being possessed? Probably. But as you said, Q needs us right now and I’m mostly functional so I’m just not gonna think about it.”

“We’ll search for a therapist together, then,” Julia says softly, the hint of a smile creasing the corners of her eyes.

Eliot reaches across the table and takes her hand. “Thank you.”

She frowns a bit. “What for?”

“You’re the one who gave us hope, told us it wasn’t over. We couldn’t have started Operation Save Our Nerd without you.” She lowers her eyes and looks all but ready to deflect his words, so he squeezes her hands, shakes it a little until she’s looking back at him. “I’m serious, Julia. Before you spoke, all I could feel was the pain and the loss of my—of Q. I couldn’t see a way out of the misery. You showed it to me.”

She chews on her bottom lip and her eyes are full of unshed tears, but she’s smiling.

“You love him,” she says. It’s not a question. It’s three simple words, three simple words he would’ve shied away from for the rest of his life hadn’t he been stuck in his own memories for months.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Eliot tilts his head. “Good?”

“From all the myths we’ve read, true love is often needed in cases similar to ours. So yeah, good.”

 

A week passes before they have a break through in the form of Alice and Zelda barging in the Cottage and repeating over and over again that they have found something. They call a meeting. Kady and Penny pop in absolutely soaking wet and drip all over the carpet.

“It’s monsoon season in India,” Penny offers as an explanation.

They all sit in the living room, waiting for Alice and Zelda to tell them what they found. The fact that Alice is holding something looking suspiciously like the Siphon doesn’t inspire them a lot of trust in them.

“Alright, what’s the big deal?” Margo asks, her fairy eye visibly trained on the round thing in Alice’s hand.

“Okay so, from what we know, only gods can resurrect humans, right?” Alice starts, her eyes jumping between all of them. “And right now, the only god who could do that is Hades, because Q is in his realm.”

“Yes, but Hades probably holds us accountable for his wife’s death, he’s not gonna help us,” Julia reminds them. She’s lightly glowing now that her powers are back, and there’s an air of peace and serenity surrounding her.

“This is where you come in, Julia,” Zelda says in that affected way of hers.

“And what do I do?”

“You’re a goddess,” Alice says, moving her weight from one leg to another, making a move to put her hair behind her ear only to realize it's already there. Eliot wishes someone would give some anxiety meds to the poor girl because her nervousness is contagious. “You can request Hades to give you Q.”

“Why would he do it?”

“Gods see humans as their pets. If you prove that Q is yours, he’ll give him back to you.”

“What, like Quentin is a lost puppy and Hades is the helpful neighbor that found him?” Margo asks.

“More or less,” Alice replies, smoothing down her skirt a few times.

“Okay but we all know that gods are massive dicks, though,” Kady says, “No offense,” she adds in the direction of Julia who just smiles and shrugs. “It’s not going to be that easy.”

“No, which is why we have this,” Zelda says, taking the thing from Alice.

“And what’s _this_?” Margo asks, raising an eyebrow and pursing her lips.

“Not to be the asshole here, but it looks a lot like your Siphon,” Eliot says.

“It’s because it is one,” Zelda smiles. “But fear not, it’s perfectly harmless.”

“What does it do?” Penny asks.

“It’s going to harness and amplify our love for Quentin,” Alice replies. “It’ll serve as the proof that he belongs to us, via Julia. Hades is not gonna argue with another god with that kind of proof.”

“I’m just a super new goddess, though,” Julia says. “And this is Hades we’re talking about. The guy has been around for millennia. Why would he listen to anything I have to say?”

“The power of the gods isn’t based only on their age,” Zelda says. “It’s resting mostly on their believers. And right now, Our Lady of The Trees is a very popular deity in Fillory.”

“You might want to go there and perform a few miracles before going to confront Hades,” Alice adds.

Julia looks at each of them. When her eyes stop on Eliot’s, he nods. He trusts her.

“How does the Siphon work?”

 

It turns out that charging the Siphon is the easiest thing they had to do so far: they just have to hold it and think about their love for Quentin. Between Julia, Alice, Margo and him, the contraption is already glowing and heavy. Kady, Penny, Foggs, even Zelda add to it, and then Julia takes it with her to Fillory to have Fen and Josh add their love to it.

She comes back the next day with a supercharged Siphon and more miracles under her belt. The faint glow she had before is now a full-on one, to the point where it’s almost painful to look at her for too long.

“Anyone think they can add more love to that thing before I go under?” she asks with the Siphon in her hand.

Eliot wobbles to her. He thinks he gave it all the first time, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure. The ball is hot to the touch but he keeps his hand there and focus on everything Quentin he has inside of him.

Then he takes a step back. Julia smiles to him.

“I’m bringing him home,” she says, the picture of serenity, and then she’s gone.

 

*

 

Quentin doesn’t know how time passes in the Underworld. There’s no night, no day, no obvious need to eat or sleep. Since he arrived, he has spent all of his time in the Library, harassing the Librarians into helping him get books about resurrection and rising from the dead.

“Kid,” one of the Librarians tells him at some point, “you can’t go back upstairs. Ever. The only guy who could do that is Hades and he won’t do it.”

“Why not?” Quentin asks.

“Because it’s not his job! His job is to keep our souls in the Underworld, not putting them back on Earth! And if he was doing it for a nobody like you, do you imagine the chaos that would ensue? Everyone else and their mother would want to come back to life! You’re dead, kid, deal with it.”

Quentin spends some time at the bowling alley after that. Julia’s friends aren’t there anymore. He hopes they have moved on and found their perfect Afterlife.

He reads books he knows have nothing to do with coming back to life. He explores the waiting area a bit more and finds a bar, but all he feels like drinking is Eliot’s signature drink and no matter how many times he explains what’s in it to the barman, it never tastes right. He doesn’t even feel the alcohol afterwards.

He’s almost ready to give up and find Penny when microphones above him crackle to life.

“Quentin Coldwater is requested at the front desk,” the disembodied voice says. “I repeat, Quentin Coldwater is requested at the front desk.”

 

When he gets there, he’s greeted by the sight of a glowing Julia. He does a double take because how can his Julia be there, at the front desk of the Underworld, surrounded by a golden halo and looking like the most beautiful angel he’s ever seen in his life?

“Julia?” he croaks.

Her eyes are liquid gold when she looks at him, but her smile is the one she always directed at him, all warmth and love and comfort. He runs to her and she hugs him fiercely, almost possessively.

“What are you doing here?”

“Taking you home.”

“W—what?”

“I just had a chat with Hades and I convinced him that you belonged with us. So now I’m taking you home.”

The front desk clerk looks like he just drank vinegar and scrunches up his nose. “If you’d like to sign here and here so we can be done,” he says haughtily to Quentin.

Quentin grabs the pen and hastily scribbles his name where the clerk is pointing at in a folder.

“You’re free to go now,” the clerk says and closes down the folder.

Julia holds out her hand.

“What about my body?” Quentin asks.

“Don’t worry about it,” Julia says.

He takes her hand and immediately loses consciousness.

 

*

 

Margo is lounging on the couch, Eliot asleep with his head in her lap. It took some time to convince him that staying awake the whole time Julia was gone was useless, but after promising to wake him up as soon as their goddess was back with their nerd, he relented and laid down for a nap.

Zelda went back to the Library, but Alice decided to stay at the Cottage. She’s sitting in the window seat, folded on herself and chewing on her thumbnail. Margo would almost feel bad for her but she still hasn’t forgiven the betrayal at Blackspire. She doesn’t think she’s ever going to be able to. Kady went back the hedges, saying that there was nothing more she could do here and that she was needed elsewhere. As if it wasn’t an excuse to get as far from Penny-23 as possible. Margo doesn’t blame her.

 

Her fingers are trailing through Eliot’s too long hair, almost falling asleep herself when the room is illuminated in gold light and Julia appears in the middle of it.

“That’s subtle,” Margo comments as she shields her eyes from the light.

“Sorry,” she hears Julia say. A couple of seconds later, the light is gone and Julia is only slightly glowing. “I had to show off to Hades, I forgot to turn it down,” she says.

“Where’s Quentin?” Alice asks.

“One second,” Julia says and she kneels down on the floor.

Margo gently shakes Eliot’s shoulder. “El. El, wake up.”

“Bambi?” he says, not completely awake yet.

“Julia’s back.”

He sits up and groans when it pulls on his wound. “Where’s Q?”

“Working on it,” Julia replies.

There’s light coming off her fingers and she’s murmuring something. The air in the room thickens and a light buzzing sound increases with every passing second until Margo feels like she’s in an electrical storm. She grabs Eliot’s arm. The ground is almost shaking, as are the walls, and it’s not only an electrical storm now, it’s also an earthquake and probably the end of the fucking world.

A blinding light flashes and then the shaking, the buzzing, the pressure, everything stops.

Margo cautiously open her eyes again.

Julia is panting, but next to her on the floor is Quentin, asleep, looking just like the last time she saw him.

“Holy shit it worked,” Margo says.

Eliot stands up too fast for his still injured body and groans, a hand flying to his stomach. She hurries to help him go to Quentin’s side.

“Is he—” he starts.

“He’s going to be fine,” Julia says. “He just needs rest. Coming back from the dead is kind of a big deal,” she smiles.

Eliot chuckles wetly and, with Margo’s help, sits down on the floor. “Thank you,” he says, breathless. She doesn’t know who he’s thanking, but it doesn’t exactly matter.

She bends down and kisses his forehead. “I’m gonna tell the others.”

 

*

 

They put Quentin in the room Eliot has been occupying since his exorcism. Eliot sits on the armchair next to the bed and waits. Julia said Q needed rest, but it doesn’t exactly tell him how long it’ll be until he wakes up, does it? Eliot doesn’t want him to wake up to an empty room, so he decides to camp in the chair until their own Sleeping Beauty decides to wake up.

He doesn’t know how much times has passed when Julia comes to check on them and brings him tea.

“Thank you,” he tells her.

“It’s just tea,” she says from where she’s perched on the bed, brushing Quentin’s hair away from his face.

“Not that.”

She turns to him. “I couldn’t have done without all of you.”

“How are you?” he asks her.

“I’m good. Tired, but good. Now I just want him to wake up.”

“I know the feeling.”

She gets to her feet, brushes her fingers to Eliot’s shoulder. “You should sleep too.”

Eliot chuckles. “You being a goddess doesn’t mean you have the right to boss me around.”

She laughs. “Just see it as advice from a concerned friend?”

He rolls his eyes with a smile. “Alright.”

She leaves the room.

On the bed, Quentin hasn’t moved. Eliot slumps a bit more in the armchair, tries to get comfortable despite his injury.

“If you wake up and I’m snoring, you are under moral obligation to keep it to yourself,” he says to Quentin.

He leans his head against his hand and closes his eyes.

 

*

 

The first thing Quentin notices is the smell that surrounds him, something like freshly done laundry and warm wood. The Underworld didn’t smell like that at all, more like a hospital and an airport rolled into one. So that smell, familiar and comforting for reasons that are still unclear to him, is really the first clue that he didn’t hallucinate full-on goddess Julia coming down to save him. His eyelids weight a ton when he opens them. It’s dark in the room he is: second proof that he isn’t in the Underworld anymore, there’s no night time down there. He moves his head and winces. His muscles feel stiff and sore, like he hasn’t used them in a long long time. God, how long has he been in this bed?

He looks around, tries to figure out where he is. There's a window on his right, curtains drawns, an armchair next to it. He thinks the dark shape in front of the bed is a wardrobe, but it's hard to tell in the absence of light. He can make up the door on the left, a sliver a light passing underneath it.

“Q?”

He turns his head toward the sound. He hasn’t seen him before because of how dark the room is, but in the armchair is Eliot, and it is Eliot, not The Monster. His hair is still long, but gone are the horrible blood stained graphic shirt, the shapeless cardigan, the lifeless eyes. He’s wearing a sweater and some pj pants and still looks too thin and sleep deprived, but it’s Eliot, and he’s alive and Quentin could just cry from the relief he feels right now.

And apparently he is crying, because Eliot stands up from the armchair and sits down on the bed instead and brings his hands to Quentin’s face, all the while making soothing noises, repeating “It’s over, it’s over, you’re back, I’m here, I’m here.” Quentin sits up as best as he can and holds onto Eliot, who cups the back of his head and keeps him close.

Once he can breathe without breaking into sobs again, Quentin inhales deeply. Freshly done laundry and warm wood. Eliot.

“Is it really over?” he asks in a small voice, half-muffled in the fabric of Eliot’s sweater.

“It is.”

Quentin disentangles from Eliot, who seems reluctant to let him go. He wipes at his face with his sleeve.

“Are you okay?” he asks Eliot, who laughs briefly.

“I’m not the one who died,” Eliot says in a strangled voice. “Don’t do that again, please,” he adds quietly.

“I won’t.”

Eliot starts to stand up.

“Where are you going?” Quentin asks, anxious about being alone, even if this is Eliot’s room in the Cottage, a place he knows, a place he feels safe in.

“I’m just going to tell the others Sleeping Beauty has awaken,” Eliot says. He leans over and kisses him on the forehead. “I’ll be right back.”

 

Eliot comes back with Margo, Julia, Alice and Penny-23. Margo hugs him.

“Don’t make me cry again, asshole,” she tells him and he chuckles, because she can try and be as much as a cold bitch as she wants, he knows she has a heart, he knows she cares.

“Sorry about that,” he says.

“Whatever, I’m going to Fillory, you want me to bring back some of Josh’s edibles?”

“I think I’m gonna stay away from hallucinogens for now, but thanks, Margo.”

“Suit yourself,” she says and leaves.

That leaves Penny-23 and Alice staring awkwardly at him, Julia looking serene and confident and emitting a faint golden glow, and Eliot, who sits down at the foot of the bed with a wince. It’s a lot of attention.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin says, pushing some of his hair behind his ear. He looks up at Alice, who he can see is on the verge of crying. “It was stupid and reckless of me and—”

“Stop,” Penny-23 says. “You did what you thought was best given the circumstances. And yeah, it was fucking reckless, but you saved us all, man. So don’t apologize.”

“He’s right,” Alice says tightly. “I wish it hadn’t come to this, but you did what you had to do. And now you’re back. Just—just don’t do anything like that ever again. Please.”

Quentin can barely look at them in the eyes. He nods, not trusting his voice not to crack, not trusting himself not to cry again if he tries to talk.

“Good talk,” Penny says and leaves the room.

Alice comes closer, puts a hand on his arm.

“I’m really glad you’re not dead, Q,” she says and leaves as well.

Julia kneels down on the floor next to him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Tired? Like I haven’t used my body in weeks?”

She hums. She puts her hand on his chest and it glows faintly. The soreness in his muscle disappears but not the fatigue.

“I’m gonna get you something to eat,” she says as she stands up.

Quentin takes her hand.

“I love you, Julia,” he says. “I feel like I don’t tell you enough. But I love you.”

“I know, Q. And I love you too.”

“Thank you for bringing me back.”

“I wasn’t alone to do it. And we were always going to bring you back. No question about it.”

He sees Eliot nodding from the corner of his eye. Julia leaves. Quentin turns to Eliot.

“How are you feeling, really? And before you tell me you’re fine, I saw you wincing when you sat down.”

Eliot lets out a laugh that’s half a sigh. “Well, let’s say that my abdominal muscles didn’t really like being torn open by a magical axe and it’s still painful to move around or have clothing directly on the wound.”

Ah, that explains the absence of dress pants and shirt and waistcoat then.

“And Julia…?”

“Can’t heal me because of the axe magic. I just need time and rest. Which is frustrating as hell but at least all of our urgent crises have been solved.”

Quentin smiles faintly. It feels so good to have Eliot back, to be able to talk to him, to see him, the _real_ him. He slouches down on the bed, feeling his eyelids growing heavy.

“I’m gonna let you sleep,” Eliot says.

“Stay,” Quentin mumbles. “Please.” And when Eliot doesn’t say anything and doesn’t move either, he adds: “You need sleep too. C’mon, I don’t want to be alone again.”

If he wasn’t half-asleep and only recently resurrected, Quentin would never allow himself to be this needy. But he just came back from the dead and Eliot looks like he hasn’t slept in months, so fuck it. He scouts to the left, leaving the right side of the bed empty. Eliot bites his lower lip, his eyes flicker to Quentin like he's hesitating and looking for a clue as to what is the right answer. He must find it, because he slips carefully between the sheets and rests on his side, facing him. Quentin moves around until he’s comfortable.

“You good?” he asks Eliot.

“Yes. Sleep, Q.”

 

*

 

When Julia comes back to the room with a tray loaded with two cups of tea and enough toast for the both of them, she finds them asleep, Eliot’s head on Q’s chest, their arms around each other, Q’s head slightly bowed down toward Eliot. She leaves the tray on the dresser and leaves the room quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! next (and last!) update won't be before may 13th (unless a miracle happens) 'cause i'm traveling next week and i probably won't have the time to finish the fourth part, send it to my sister for beta reading and get it back before it's airport time soooo please be patient?   
> kthxloveubye


	4. Now What

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooooorry for the wait! i was having trouble writing the end in a satisfying way but THERE IT IS AND IT'S DONE!  
> enjoy!

The next three days are spent sleeping in the bed, on the couch, on a blanket outside, or in front of the fireplace. Quentin discovers that he needs to take it easy with food, not eating too much or too many different things at the same time. It reminds him of when they reacquainted Alice to human life after they brought her back from being a Niffin.

It must remind her of that time too, because on the fourth day, as he’s reading on the couch in the living room after waking up from his second nap of the morning, she brings him a plate of crispy bacon.

“Feeling like eating something?” she asks, smiling shyly as she presents it to him.

He feels his own smile tug at the corners of his lips.

“Sure,” he says, closing his book and setting it down on the cushion next to him.

They share the plate in silence. They exchange a few awkward glances but it’s not an uncomfortable silence. It’s more like they both have things they want to say to the other and have no idea how to even begin. It’s not new, exactly, their relationship wasn’t a model of healthy communication after all, but it’s different than before—more settled, peaceful.

“Hey listen,” he ends up saying once they’re done eating. “I know you said that I shouldn’t apologize, but I still feel like I should.” Alice opens his mouth but stops herself. “Even if I did what was the logical thing at the time, and saved everyone or whatever, I still died in front of you and it’s something no one should ever have to see. Especially because you’re the one who asked me to come with you. So I’m sorry you had to witness that and I know you probably felt responsible for it and when I find a good therapist, I can totally share them with you, if you want.”

Alice chuckles at his last words. “Thank you.” She removes her glasses and wipes her eyes. “I also have something to tell you,” she says as she puts her glasses back. “Zelda asked me to come help them rebuild the Library in a less, hum, authoritarian way? As a member of the Order?”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I needed to think about it.”

Alice fidgets with her napkin, eyes going everywhere but to his face. It tells him everything he needs to know about her answer.

“But you’re going to do it, right?” he says softly.

Her eyes come back to his, wide and afraid. “Yes, I think so. Are you—mad?”

Quentin frowns. “Mad? Why would I be mad? I know the Library hasn’t been on our side, but that was mostly Everett’s fault. I might not trust them yet, but Zelda helped us. You’re perfect for that role, Alice.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Thank you, Q.”

 

During the first week, Eliot stays close to him, but despite the closeness, Quentin can’t help but feel like something is wrong, like Eliot’s keeping something from him. He always looks on the verge of saying something, he’s always watching him like hawk and pretending he isn’t when Quentin catches him. At first, Quentin thinks it’s because of all the trauma they’ve just survived. Surely it’s just Eliot making sure that Quentin is still here, still alive, or something like that. But after an entire week, Quentin is starting to have his doubts.

“You should talk to him,” Julia says when he brings it up with her. Which, thanks, Julia, super helpful.

 

Quentin corners Eliot one evening.

The Cottage is empty except for them, Alice being at the Library, Penny and Julia in Fillory so Julia can be Our Lady of the Trees, Kady unifying the hedges or terrorizing them—one never knows—and Margo and Josh working with Fen to annul Margo’s banishment from Whitespire and reinstate her as High King.

Eliot is smoking a cigarette outside, lying down in the grass, watching the stars. Quentin joins him.

“Hey,” he says when he sits down on the ground.

“Hey,” Eliot replies. He holds his cigarette out, a silent offering.

Quentin takes it and puts it to his lips. He inhales and when he breathes the smoke out, he casts a spell, and the smoke becomes a ship sailing away in the night.

“Nice one,” Eliot says.

Quentin gives him the cigarette back.

“Is something wrong?” he asks after several minutes of silence.

Eliot frowns and glances up at him. “Why?”

Quentin sighs. “I don’t know. Ever since I came back, you’ve been staring at me and like, I get it you know, I also need to make sure that you—the real you I mean—is still here, but it also feels like you’re keeping something from me and I’m wondering if I’m imagining things, because you’re not saying anything and—”

“Q,” Eliot cuts before Quentin can spiral even more. He sits up, takes a deep breath. “Do you remember when I took back control?” he asks, his voice suddenly strained.

Quentin nods. “Yeah. Peaches and plums, motherfuckers,” he says softly. “I’ve always wondered how you had done it.”

“It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t fun.” Eliot swallows. His eyes roam over Quentin’s face, like he needs to find courage somewhere and Quentin’s face is somehow that somewhere. Eliot closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them, he starts talking again. “So, when I was trapped, I was in my ‘happy place’, at least that’s what Charlton—The Monster’s previous host who was also trapped in with me—called it. And he told me that, in order to regain control and pass a message, no matter how briefly, I had to revisit my most painful memories, because a door would be hidden in one of them. In the worst one.”

“And that door...”

“Would lead me to have the control over my body. For a time.”

Quentin nods and takes the cigarette from Eliot’s fingers.

“So I relived every painful, embarrassing, horrible memory I could think of. The bullying at school, my father, hurting people, killing Logan Kinear when I was a teenager, I relived them all. And there was no door.”

Quentin is almost scared to ask. He has a flash of Eliot, drunk and spiraling faster than should’ve been possible after he’s had to kill Mike. “Where was it?” he asks anyway, willing his voice not to break and succeeding—mostly.

Eliot takes the cigarette back and inhales deeply, like he’s bracing himself for what’s to come.

“My most traumatic, most repressed memory was when we got our memories from our life at the Mosaic back.” Quentin frowns, not understanding. Was their life together so awful that gaining those memories back was the worst moment of Eliot’s life? He presses his lips together, swallows the knot in his throat.

Eliot glances at him and what Quentin sees in his eyes is a different story. “You asked me to try to be together again, and we had fifty years of memory as proof that we worked together, and we worked _great._ And I turned you down. I served you bullshit excuses about how that life wasn’t me, how it wasn’t us when we had a choice. I broke your heart because I was afraid, because I was terrified of you breaking mine first. And when I’m afraid I run and I ruin things before I can believe things won’t get ruined.”

“El,” Quentin chokes out but he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what Eliot is saying, he’s afraid of understanding what Eliot is saying. Eliot turns fully towards him.

“When I relived that memory, I made you, or the you who was a memory, a promise. I promised you to be braver, to tell you the truth if I was ever getting out of there. And ever since you’ve been back, I’ve wanted to tell you, but it never felt like the right time.”

“Tell me now?” Quentin asks quietly, as if speaking too loudly would chatter the moment.

Eliot looks at him for a long time and Quentin lets him—Eliot isn’t great at vulnerability and emotionally charged moments. His eyes are full of determination and something Quentin would call love if he wasn’t scared of getting his hopes up.

“I’m in love with you, Q,” Eliot says. Quentin blinks, but he can’t speak, can’t ask the millions of questions crowding his mind, because Eliot smiles and Eliot _is in love with him_. “I should never have turned you down that day, because you were right,” Eliot continues. “Fifty years. Who gets proof of concept like that? What I said to you that day wasn’t the truth. The truth is that life was me, and it was us, and I would chose you a million times over, because I love you, and I want to be with you and live another fifty years with you hogging all the blankets in bed and yet still putting your cold feet between mine. And I needed you to know that, even if you’ve moved on, even if I’ve hurt you too much for this to happen ever again.”

Eliot is slightly out of breath when he stops talking, leaning toward Quentin but not touching him, as if he’s not sure he has the right to. So Quentin does the one thing he can think of: grabbing Eliot’s shirt and kissing him. Eliot immediately cups the back of his neck and tilts his head, deepening the kiss and pulling Quentin closer at the same time, cradling his head like Quentin is something precious, something to cherish and to love and _holy shit_ , Quentin is really hoping this isn’t his fucked-up version of the Afterlife. This has to be real. This _needs_ to be real.

Quentin pulls back slowly before leaning his forehead against Eliot’s.

“Am I hallucinating?” he asks and he sounds positively wrecked.

Eliot chuckles. “If you were, how would asking me help?”

Quentin can’t believe Eliot is quoting their first conversation at him.

“I love you,” he whispers in the space between them.

Eliot’s smile is blinding and Quentin feels like his heart just grew three sizes, even more so when Eliot leans forward to kiss him again. They both know what they want, and it’s being as close to each other as they can. It’s on its way to become a full-on make-out session, with possibly some groping and nakedness involved, but Eliot winces and pulls back, his hand going to his stomach.

“Are you okay?”

“Me? I’m fantastic,” Eliot replies. “My stomach? Not so much.”

“Sorry,” Quentin mumbles and starts to move back.

“Hey, no, where are you going?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, El.”

Something in Eliot’s eyes softens and his hand comes up to cup Quentin’s cheek. Quentin leans against his palm.

“Maybe we’re going to have to wait for our more _physical_ activities, but that doesn’t mean you have to go away, Q. I don’t want you to. Ever.”

“Okay. Okay. But at least let’s move inside, I think I’m being eaten alive by mosquitoes here.”

Eliot laughs and pulls Quentin towards him. “Bed?” he whispers again his lips.

Quentin kisses him.

 

*

 

“Now what?” Quentin asks a couple weeks later, as they’re lounging in the living room one afternoon.

They’re mostly healed, Eliot doesn’t need his cane to move around anymore—except if he has to be standing up and walking more than two hours—and Quentin has stopped falling asleep every thirty minutes.

Now reality is knocking at the door and Quentin hasn’t felt this anxious in a long time. Going from crisis to crisis and from quest to quest and then dying was stressful, but somehow not as much as figuring out what he’s supposed to do in his life now that no one is dead or dying anymore—except Penny-40 but he kind of rules the Underground Library now, so he isn’t doing so bad in the end.

Eliot frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Now that all of the bullshit is over, what do we do? Kady is the leader of the hedges. Alice is working with the Library. Julia is a goddess. Margo is back being High King with Fen and Josh. Where does that leave us? Here, in Brakebills? Do I just go back to class? I didn’t even finish my first year.”

“Do you want to go back to class?”

Quentin sighs. “No. Yes. I don’t know. Would it be weird to go back to school after literally saving the world like three times, learning way too powerful spells and kinda dying in the process? It would, wouldn’t it?” He’s spiraling and he knows it, but he isn’t doing well when he’s in limbos—and yes, he sees the irony of this when he literally chose to stay in the Limbos when he had the choice to move on to the Afterlife, thank you very much. He’ll never not be glad he made that choice, though. It’s that choice that allows him to snuggle against Eliot as much as he want, anytime he wants. Like right now. “How are you so calm about it?”

Eliot shrugs. “I’ve been a little too busy figuring out a way to have sex with my boyfriend without reopening my magical wound to think about anything else,” he says lightly.

Quentin rolls his eyes. “I’m serious, El,” he says, but there’s a smile pulling at his lips.

“So am I,” Eliot replies and leans over to kiss him.

If his plan was calming Quentin’s anxiety that way, it doesn’t work.

“Okay but what did you think you were going to do after you graduate?” Quentin asks once they pull apart.

Eliot slumps against the back of the couch. “Margo and I talked about opening a magic nightclub at some point. And then I became the High King of Fillory so I thought that was it, you know.” He looks up at Quentin. “What about you?”

Quentin sighs. “Well… I have always been too depressed to think I would make it past twenty, so I didn’t make any plans, really.” Eliot’s arm tightens around him. “But then I survived past twenty and my philosophy studies were going alright so I thought, why not become a professor?”

“And when you made it to Brakebills?”

“I was too focused on convincing myself it was real to project myself so far in the future. And then all hell broke loose so...”

Eliot hums.

The fact that they’re both alive truly is a miracle. Literally one, for Quentin. Having your childhood best friend become a goddess really does have its perks, even if said goddess is always traveling in one world or another. He sighs.  
“So, yeah. Now what?”

 

They don’t say anything for a long time. Quentin drops his head on Eliot’s lap. Eliot’s hand finds its way to Q’s hair and starts massaging his scalp.

Quentin closes his eyes, snuggles closer to Eliot’s stomach and makes a little contented noise that wouldn’t have been surprising coming from a cat.

“Not to be cheesy,” Eliot says. “But I don’t really care what happens as long as we’re together.”

“It is cheesy,” Quentin mumbles into the fabric of his shirt.

“I know. Shut up.”

Eliot feels him smile. “Love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soo remember how i said i didn't know how to write the end? it's because i have _ideas_ about these assholes' future and this fic almost became a behemoth but then i thought it'd be better as a series probably (because less pressure) so uh yeah. that's a thing. that could happen. once i'm done with the millions of other things i'm writing.  
> hope you enjoyed this!


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